Page 73 of Christmas at the Borrow a Bookshop

He scanned the horizon for boats. Nothing. Only a great container transporter like a blue dot miles out at sea.

Turning, he ran his hands over his head. ‘Alex!’ he shouted into the stilling air.

Where were the helicopters now? Why weren’t they looking for her? Frantic, he clutched his stomach. The hungry need inside him was back, only now it was mixed with sickening fear.

In the distance, way along the cliffs, he spotted a group in neon vests walking in a line, advancing slowly. They were the search and rescue team, all in hard hats, one with a dog in a yellow jacket with the words ‘recovery dog’ along its side, it’s snout to the ground.

Magnús ran back along the sea wall, jumping the plastic crates that had somehow escaped the pub’s store room and scattered themselves everywhere. He leapt from the lifeboat ramp and onto the beach, wondering dimly where the pebbles were, out at sea or buried under this cloying brown clay beneath his feet? The whole strand was eerily transformed and unreal, like something from a disaster movie.

He’d join the search, lie if he had to, and say he was from the environment agency, like he’d seen written on that van. He had to help find her.

They were still a way off yet, along the bay. He could see their faces were lifted to the cliffs as though sizing up the state of the rocks when they should be looking all around for Alex.

Magnús walked close enough to the cliffs to be able to see inside all the little caves and crevices but repeatedly turned to scan the shoreline too.

Broken boat parts scattered the beach, none of them brown and white like theDagalien.

‘Alex,’ he called, over and over.

Each time he thought he saw a glimpse of white hair he found his eyes were playing cruel tricks; it was torn plastic or stone or nets.

As the search line grew closer he heard their radios crackling. ‘Still nothing,’ a man told a command centre somewhere.

Magnús didn’t know he was cold, and he couldn’t feel his hunger now. He searched on, crying out for Alex, until he heard the radios again. This time the message was incoming.

‘Female found on an unnamed boat off Lundy. Repeat. One female retrieved from the sea. On route to District Hospital.’

Magnús’s feet moved faster than his brain and he reached the line, shouting all the time. ‘They found Alex? Is she all right?’

The rescuer with the dog frowned at the sight of him, and told him he shouldn’t be on the beach, the cliffs overhead weren’t safe; there could easily be a serious rock fall.

‘She’s alive?’ Magnús shouted, utterly desperate. ‘Tell me!’

Before anyone could answer the radios crackled once more. ‘Search for Alexandra Robinson to resume. The airlifted woman is a Mrs Eve Holsworthy. No injuries. Repeat, the search for Alexandra Robinson must continue.’

Magnús didn’t understand. Reeling, he turned away from the rescuers, all of whom were telling him to get back up to the Big House.

He couldn’t hear them.

‘Nei,nei,’ he shook his head, his hands on the back of his neck. ‘Nei!’

Looking out to sea as if Alex would emerge from the waves, Magnús stumbled onto the sand, then he was back up on his feet and running, his knee sending out pain signals where it had twisted. He didn’t care. She was somewhere out there needing him.

‘Stay away from the cliffs!’ one of the party bellowed as Magnús ran past them along the beach. ‘Requesting police presence; there’s a civilian impeding search efforts on the beach,’ they told their radio.

Magnús wasn’t aware of any of that.

They hadn’t searched the line below the dripping cliffs. They’d kept to the middle of the beach. Now that he knew he wasn’t looking for a boat, he’d look for a body. He prayed for a living one, a breathing Alex, somewhere here amongst the fallen rocks and mud.

‘Alex!’ This time his voice was so loud he feared the cliffs might come down upon him.

He froze, listening to the reverberation. Police radios in the distance told him he was going to be dragged away.

‘Listen, Magnús,’ he told himself.

There was the sound of water dropping onto rocks. Like music. He followed the sound blindly, staggering over stones and wood, getting closer to the waterfall that had flowed down over the cliffs and onto Clove Lore beach for the last thousand years – never heavier than today. Its crystal-clear fresh water trickle had been replaced by the heavy brown flow of the run-off. The air smelled of earth and wet stone.

All the ferns that had clung to the rocks around the waterfall had been torn free and were strewn along the beach in newly formed sand channels leading to the sea. Magnús drew closer to the black rock face and the brown waterfall, and all the time he listened to the watery music. In his desperate state it sounded for all the world like someone singing.

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